


he loves you. it's not enough.

by chll51



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/M, after s4 and her trying to take camelot, i don't know what this story is supposed to be, le sigh, these two will be the death of me, we were robbed of avalon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 16:48:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17287799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chll51/pseuds/chll51
Summary: Camelot comes first, always. Needs and wants can come after; and Morgana is always somewhere in between those spaces.





	he loves you. it's not enough.




 

 

 

 

 

 

> _This love was damned from the start._  
>  _We were born misfortune in our blood and calamity in our bones. Our fate are one. You jump. I fall. After all darling, God loves a tragedy._  
>  _- And what’s more tragic than lovers dying apart?_

 

 

 

  
Morgana holds a hand to her side, presses down on her opened wounds and laughs out of cruel and bitter irony that she should die here in the middle of the forest floor, among the lushness of the trees and the greenest of spring. Her breathing hitches; breaths come in gasps. All the magic, all the sacrifices and she still ends up with a cut to her side. What was even the point of all the hate and anger?

Somewhere, Uther rolls in his grave, mocking her. _Little girl, you were never meant for the crown._

He finds her first for once, and it's been years that they have any contact that's meant to comfort and not hurt. She thinks that he is an illusion, a haunting vision coming to life, because he's the first boy that she loved, and the man that she wants dead. Then he touches her, and she knows that he's real. His features come in and out of focus as she blinks to catch a glimpse of his face. He looks scared; worried lines etch across his forehead, the blue in his eyes dims as he mumbles something incoherent. She wants to laugh because it sounds like he's afraid to lose her; but that's impossible. No one has been afraid to lose her; they condemned her before she ever struck their precious Camelot. His mouth moves again, and she shakes her head, fingers turning cold; and she just lets go. Maybe it’s time the wicked witch dies.

After all, she has always meant to burn.

 

 

 

 

 _You have slept for four days and three nights_ , Arthur tells her when he hands her a glass of water for her parched throat. She hesitates and looks at him with distrust. He tilts his head, and gives a _really Morg_ because it's true. He has never fired the first shot, even if he's not entirely innocent. They both know the things they did, and who they did them for; they are under no illusions that it was only for the good of people. There was hate and love, and no one understands those emotions better than them. _Consequences be damned_ ; she taught him that. “Where am I?” she croaks out; her throat burns, and everything hurts. She sees bandages on her and looks over at him. “Why?”

“Try not to speak too much,” advises Arthur, as he takes the empty cup from her. “It's safe.”

“It's never safe,” she says quietly. For once, there's no harshness to her words, just resignation. “You should've learned that already.”

Her words wound without meaning to; and he can’t imagine what her life must have been like. The chained up, at the bottom of a well, frailty image of Morgana appears in his head, and he tastes regret because things could have been different had he known. He thinks, hopes, and prays that it would be, but doubts shout back  _you couldn't save her even when you knew the truth_. He blamed her so much for leaving him in the dark, but maybe it was him who left her there first. “No, I suppose not.”

Her mouth draws open slightly; the only reaction that tells him she's surprised by his honesty. Her eyes skim his face, then she asks with quiet tone, absent of hostility. “Is this in exchange for my surrender?”

“No.” He wants to say that he's not his father, but the words do not come out. Some days he can't see the difference all that much because the lines blur. Sins of the father falls on the son, does it not? He knows something about carrying a legacy. “The decision was one born out of instincts.”

She wants to laugh at his absurdity of an answer. “If your instinct is to save me, then Camelot might be in trouble after all.”

“Something I’ve been told many times.”

The lines near the corner of her mouth deepens skeptically. “I know you, Arthur, or did. What do you really want?”

 _You_ , he wants to say  _I want you_ , but he doesn't know what he wants her for anymore. She was the first, and he wants to tell her so, that she means something to him, probably still does if he allows himself time to think about it, but the words get stuck because he's not that young boy anymore. He's not the impulsive prat that chased her around, trying to catch her. He knows what his duties are, and where his loyalties lay. Camelot comes first, always. Needs and wants can come after; and Morgana is always somewhere in between those spaces. That's as much as of her that he can have and will admit to. “I don’t know.” It's the closest to the truth that he can give her. “Maybe redemption.”

She holds his gaze for a little longer then breaks eye contact. “Then you're looking in the wrong place.”

He searches for hidden meanings behind her words, but he finds none. No games, just honesty and resignation from a wounded soldier that has grown tired of this war between them. He lets himself stare a bit longer than he should, and notices that while her lips are chapped, cheeks hollowed, her eyes are still vibrantly green. She's the most beautiful girl that he has ever known. “I’m afraid that I have always looked in the wrong place.”

There's a small smile on her lips. “Maybe we are doomed after all.”

He clears his throat. “The bandages should hold you until you’re healed I don't know if your magic—” It’s the first time he refers to her magic in gentler terms. “Stay or go, the choice is yours. I won't look for you if you leave.”

 

 

 

 

Morgana stays. 

The thing about coming back from the brink of death is the _what now._ She has no army. Her magic is weak, and she is vulnerable to attacks for the first time in years (she made a promise once—after being poisoned, captured, and chained—that she'll make it rain blood to all those that burned her) but she's not sure if she has any fight left in her. She doesn't know who or what she's fighting for anymore.

Arthur might have saved her out of guilt, but he should have left her to die instead.

 

 

 

 

Mordred appears in her dream every now and then, asking for help. His face is bruised and hands fill with cuts. Blood soaks his armor. _Come home_ , he repeats like a prayer, reaching for her hand.

Morgana wakes up screaming and gasping.

 

 

 

 

She doesn't leave. She knows the dream means something. They always do. Images of Mordred flashes in her head, filling her with dread and guilt. With her magic is almost back to its full power, the option to go hangs like a death sentence because she can't find herself to do so even though there's nothing keeping her here. “You come every day. The people must wonder where you go,” says Morgana, staring at him as he gently replaces her bandages with care. She hasn't told him that they were useless, and she's afraid to admit why. “Do they know?”

He pauses, then shakes his head.

She’s tired of being a secret. “Like father, like son.”

He looks at her like it strikes a nerve, and retreats his hands. “They think that I am mourning your death.”

“They're fools.”

“They're not wrong.”

Her jaw clenches.

“I don't know who you are anymore,” he says, looking at his hands instead of hers. He becomes smaller, and younger, unlike the king-like image that he usually projects. “I don't understand who you are.”

Morgana sees him, possibly for the first time with his guards down, the boy she loved, and tried to forge into a king. He was supposed to be better and different than his father. She made sure of that, and gave her blood for it. Of course that was before the nightmares began, and their relationship weakened. She thought that his love for her would be the constant through it all, but he proved her wrong. “What do you see when you look at me?”

“Someone I used to—” He’s not entirely sure what the ending to that sentence would be because he can't put a word to what she is, or what they are. “I see someone that I could have saved.”

“Such arrogance you have, thinking that I needed saving at all.” Her eyes glow gold, but fear is the last thing he feels. He knows that there’s no reason to trust her not to hurt him, and it won't be the first time that she betrays him. It is, however, poetic to die by the hands of your first love, and he has come to terms with that. Then her eyes dim out. He almost tells her that it was never her magic that he was afraid of or hated. “You want me to be that girl you used to know, the one who stood on the sideline, and watched in silence as her people died because you would rather uphold an oppressive regime than to destroy it. A tyrant is still a tyrant no matter how much you loved him, and death does not wash away the sins he committed.”

“Then what does that make you, m'lady,” retorts Arthur acidly. “What about the lives you took in the name of justice and freedom? The people that you executed because they refused to pledge loyalty to you, who will answer for them?”

"I will when my time comes."

"You still think you didn't do anything wrong." 

“That's rich coming from a boy who whose hands are just as bloodied as mine, yet wonder why the people won't bow to him. A king that’s not for all people is no king at all.” Warning signs go off in her head as her emotions get the better of her. She clutches the hem of her dress. “We both know that without me, there's no you.”

She's not wrong. They’re not whole without the other because all they had was each other. Their identity morphed and grew into what the other lacked. After all, jealousy, envy, love, lust, they were all taught by her. She was supposed to be his other half. “Yet you did not hesitate leaving me behind.”

“I was dying behind those walls, watching my own kind being persecuted, fearing for my life, and hiding who I was.” Her eyes turns teary, and her voice betrays her by breaking. “I was screaming for help, and none of you noticed or cared. You thought I was having hysterics. The day I left Camelot, I stopped being in pain.”

“I have done many things in my life, but don't you dare say I did not care. I spent years searching for you. I mourned for you, prayed for you, and hoped for your return. When you came back, I thank the Gods, but you decided that I was already lost to you. You shut me out so you can't blame me for letting someone else in during your absence and thereafter. What would you have me done?”

“I wanted you to fight for me,” she says; her voice becomes shaky. They're so close to one another; each stares at the other’s opened wounds, because who else but them can pick each other apart? His weaknesses are her weaknesses after all. “Alas, I should have known better.”

The bitterness from her voice pierces his skin and punctures his lung. He feels the air leaving his body, as he fights for breaths. He inhales to find his words. “You don't get to do that. You don't get to decide how I grieved.”

“Neither do you.” Her face hardens, as the warm from her eyes fades. She digs her nails into her palms. “You saved me because you thought that the old Morgana will come back. You saw my failure to kill you as affections. You are wrong. I would have killed you had my magic worked.”

She could always read him better than he did her, and hurt him more than he ever could to her. “Well then, it seems,” he then pauses to swallow lump in his throat. His gaze directs at the ground. “That you were right after all. I do look for things in the wrong place.”

Her loud silence hurts more than anything else she could say.

 

 

 

 

Mordred comes to her in another dream, except this time there are bodies at his feet. She sees fleck of blond hair and immediately recognizes Arthur from behind. She looks around, seeing soldiers entangled battle. Her face flood with horror as she watches rivers turning red.

When she looks back, it's exact moment a blade goes through Arthur's chest.

 

 

 

 

She throws a sword at his feet. “For old time’s sake?”

He learns long ago that it's pointless to argue with her. “Same rules?”

“Whoever drops their sword first loses.” Then she smirks; her arrogance reminds him of the old her, and he shakes himself from the thought. She has warned him about thoughts like that. “And I won't even need magic to win.”

He nods, then delivers the first blow. How fitting, she thinks, dodging it with ease. She strikes with more force, and surprise registers on his face. He might be faster, and bigger, but what she lacks in size, she makes up in skills. He forgets that she has always won during their duel in their youth. This is no different. They weave through each other until the last second, she catches an opening and flicks his sword out of his grip. “You hesitated.”

He doesn't deny it.

“Stop making me the exception to your rule,” says Morgana with her sword to his throat. “Otherwise, you will always lose.”

He sighs tiredly. “So kill me, or tell me why we are doing this.”

She watches him carefully, then drops the sword. “I'm leaving.”

He feels the air leaving his lung. It shouldn't have hurt, he reminds himself. The possibility has always been there.

“I saw you die, Arthur. I don't know when or where it happens, but it will.”

His face distorts into confusion. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I owe you a debt, and I consider it now repaid.”

He inhales shakily, unsure of what he was expecting her to say. _Lies_ , the voice in his head scolded. He wanted her to say that he wasn't wrong. That somewhere deep down, he still mattered. “Of course.”

A couple of silent pauses pass, then she walks closer to him; she places a hand on his chest, right above his heart. He looks down at her; nerves firing all over the place. She's too close for comfort. “A war is coming, and if you want to survive, Arthur,” she then looks up at him; her eyes echo concerned. “You need to be prepared. You must not be compromised on the battlefield.”

A quick gulp.

“Goodbye, Arthur.” Then she snaps her finger, and everything fades to black. When he awakes, not sure what the hours of the day it is, he finds the cottage empty and her out of sight. He surveys the room, hoping to find a trace of goodbye, but finds none. Their swords laid at his feet, and nothing else. His mind replays the last couple of weeks as emptiness settles, and the truth sinks in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _You love her  
>  _It’s not enough.__

**Author's Note:**

> Ihad this sitting in my draft for the past 5 months and finally got around to finishing it. The ending is... something. Nothing was beta'd, so all mistakes are mine. Thanks for reading and C/C are always welcome.


End file.
